eli5 / How do we know the half life of (or even that it is radioactive) Bismuth-209 when it is literally longer than the age of the universe by several orders of magnitude
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Lets forget about elements or radiation or half lives. Those aren’t at all important to this discussion. Let me explain
I have a big plate of cookies on the table during a party, its a 1000 cookies though, huge plate. Occasionally someone will take a cookie, but not too often. I see that every 15 minutes, 1 cookie gets taken. If I know that I lose 1 cookie every 15 minutes, how long would it take for 500 of the 1000 cookies to get taken? Its easy math 15 minutes x 500 cookies = 7500 minutes
Now thats a long time, but it wasn’t hard to figure out. My party isn’t going to last 7500 minutes but, if I stuck around for 7500 minutes and left the plate out, it would be spot on, after 7500 minutes, I’d have only 500 cookies left.
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